io8 HOLLIS W. FIELD 



To eliminate seed from a fruit is one of the easy proposi- 

 tions which has confronted Mr. Burbank. To change size 

 and color of a flower and to intensify an odor that has proved 

 pleasing and yet elusive, have been labors of love with him. 

 A seedless prune is an accomplishment appreciated in Cali- 

 fornia horticulture. His plumcot, obtained from the crossing 

 of the plum and prune, is a new fruit with a flavor that is all 

 its own. 



From one of his developed plum trees on one occasion 

 22,000 green plums had to be stripped from the overburdened 

 branches in order that the tree might develop properly its 

 normal load of plums. The late Cecil Rhodes in South 

 Africa received from Mr. Burbank some plum trees which were 

 set out in Rhodesia and from which Mr. Rhodes afterward sent 

 fruit in a basket to Mr. Burbank at San Francisco, the plums ar- 

 riving in perfect condition after a voyage of 18,000 miles. 



How were these things accomplished? 



Through a knowledge of plants gained through his own 

 painstaking efforts, many of these serving only to overturn 

 principles and theories that had been advanced by others 

 before him. He recognizes the importance of the old phrases 

 natural selection and survival of the fittest, but above 

 these in importance and effectiveness are the most artificial 

 of crossings. 



It is in this crossing of species that he breaks up the ten- 

 dencies of a plant's life through all its ages of environment, 

 habit, and heredity. Not in the first generation may the 

 sharpest variations appear, but in the succeeding generations 

 those mutations and variations that are prompted by hered- 

 ity far back into either branch, may be expected to develop, 

 often in wholly unexpected forms. All characteristics which 

 are thus transmitted, he holds to have been acquired, and in 

 the crossing he hastens processes which nature, unaided, 

 might be thousands of years in bringing about. 



Mr. Burbank recently has been at work upon the tobacco 

 plant with a view to increasing its size, improving its flavor, 

 and at the same time making it responsive to wider climatic 

 zones. A plant ten feet high, with leaves two feet wide and 

 four feet long has resulted. 



